Dec 18, 2008

Lemmings

Today, in conference rooms at ad agencies all across America, the following words will be uttered "And we can make it an iPhone app."

That statement will be met with great glee and approval.

The iPhone app in question will not be anything potentially useful like the Amazon store app or fun and quirky like Ocarina. It will be a game centered around the client's product, something like "use the Clorox bleach to get the stains off the t-shirt." (If the agency is really thinking today, different stains will be worth different point amounts.)

The account team will have insisted that the app be required to capture names and email addresses, since that is the only way the agency could sell it into the client. The client will appreciate that.

The creative team will have spent several hours and several thousand dollars of billable time creating comps of the game as well as several variations on the little icon that lives on the iPhone screen. The client will appreciate that less.

Everyone will clap and cheer and congratulate themselves for being so forward thinking and so digitally savvy.

There will be close to 20 people in the room and not a single one of them will think to ask "Why on earth would anybody want to download this thing?"